Social media comprises any medium, network, channel, or technology for facilitating communication between a large number of individuals and/or entities (users). Some common examples of social media are Facebook or Twitter, each of which facilitates communications in a variety of forms between large numbers of users (Facebook is a trademark of Facebook, Inc. in the United States and in other countries. Twitter is a trademark of Twitter Inc. in the United States and in other countries.) Social media, such as Facebook or Twitter allow users to interact with one another individually, in a group, according to common interests, casually or in response to an event or occurrence, and generally for any reason or no reason at all.
Some other examples of social media are websites or data sources associated with radio stations, news channels, magazines, publications, blogs, and sources or disseminators of news or information. Some more examples of social media are websites or repositories associated with specific industries, interest groups, action groups, committees, organizations, teams, or other associations of users.
Data from social media comprises unidirectional messages, or bi-directional or broadcast communications in a variety of languages and forms. Such communications in the social media data can include proprietary conversational styles, slangs or acronyms, urban phrases in a given context, formalized writing or publication, and other structured or unstructured data.
Structured data is data that conforms to an organization defined by a specification. In a data fragment of a structured data, the content of the data fragment has meaning or significance not only from the literal interpretation of the content of the fragment, but also from the form, location, and other organization-specific attributes of the fragment.
In contrast, unstructured data is data that does not conform to any particular organization. Furthermore, the position or form of the content in a data fragment of unstructured data generally does not contribute to the meaning or significance of the content.
Social media stores information about its users in a structured manner. For example, a user of a social media website has a profile, which includes a set of attributes. The profile attributes in a user profile capture a variety of information about the user, including but not limited to the user's name, location, address, marital status, nationality, age, gender, interests, likes, dislikes, preferences, and so on. Thus, the profile is structured data, comprising a data structure and including an organization of such information within that data structure.
A user's messages, contributions, or other similar interactions with the social media (collectively referred to hereinafter as “messages”) can include any type or size of data. For example, a user can post text, pictures, videos, links, or combinations of these and other forms of information to a social media website. Furthermore, such information can be posted in any order, at any time, for any reason, and with or without any context. Thus, a user's interactions with a social media can be regarded as unstructured data.